Exam 1: Ch 1-3 Flashcards
Paradigm
Basic approaches that are asking different questions about people
Trait approach
How do people differ in their personalities, behavior, and the psychological processes behind them? The dominant approach right now
Biological approach
How can we understand the mind in terms so of the body, including the brain? Considers biochemistry, neuroanatomy, genetics, and evolution
Psychoanalytic approach
What internal conflicts are happening in the unconscious? Based on the writings of Freud
Phenomenological approach
Focuses on people’s conscious experience of the world. Emphases on experience, free will, and the meaning of life. Closely related to humanistic psychology and exstentialism
Humanistic approach
How conscious awareness produces uniquely human attributes; finding meaning and the basis of happiness. Closely related to phenomenological approach and existentialism.
Cross-cultural approach
How the experience of reality might be different across cultures. Subsect of phenomenological approach
Learning and cognitive processes approach
How cognitive processes, including perception, memory, and thought are involved in learning. Learning is used here looking at how behavior changes as a result of learned associations, rewards, punishments, and other life experiences.
Classic behaviorism
Focuses on evoked behavior, i.e. how the environment molds us
Social learning
How observation, self-evaluation, and vicarious learning determine behavior
The goal of personality psychology
To explain the whole person in his or her daily environment
Behaviorism
Focuses on how behavior changes as a function of rewards and punishments
Funder’s First Law
Great strengths are usually great weaknesses and, and vice versa
Psychological triad
Thoughts, feelings, behaviors
Funder’s Third Law
“Something beats nothing, two times out of three”
Meaning: gather as many clues as possible and put them together
S-Data
Self-judgments and Self-Reports. Usually in the form of questionnaires or surveys. High face validity.
Advantages: Large amount of info, access the thought, feelings, and intentions. Definitional truth (like self-esteem). Causal force (creates reality, can be thought of as self-efficacy). Simple and easy
Disadvantages: Bias, error, too simple and easy
Self-verification
The phenomenon that people work hard to bring others to treat the, in a manner that confirms their self-conception
Fish and water effect
Fish do not realize that they are wet. This can be applied to humans and serves as a disadvantage of S-data in that people may fail to realize traits of themselves if it is simply now part of their “nature.”
I-data
Data about someone from informants
Advantages: Lots of info, real-world basis. Considers common sense by taking context into account. Definitional truth (ex: likeable). Causal force (reputation affect opportunities and expectancies, expectancy affects/behavioral confirmation)
Disadvantages: Limited behavioral information, lack of access to private experience, error (more likely to remember behaviors that are extreme, unusual, or emotionally arousing), bias (letter of recommendation effect, prejudices and stereotypes)
L-Data
Life outcomes - Verifiable, concrete, real-life facts that may hold psychological significance. The “residue” of personality (how someone has affected the world)
Advantages: Not prone to biases like S and I, objective and verifiable, psychological relevance
Disadvantages: Multidetermination (outcomes have many causes)
B-Data
Behavior data: Observations of daily life (natural) or in a lab (experimental), can be from certain kinds of personality tests
Advantages: Range of contexts, appearance of objectivity
Disadvantages: Difficult and expensive, uncertain interpretation
Funder’s Second Law
There are no perfect indicators of personality; there are only clues and clues are always ambiguous
Physiological measures are an example of __-Data
B-data because HR, blood pressure, etc. are all things that a patient “does”
Natural B-Data
The ideal way to collect B data would be to set up surveillance cameras and observe subjects without them knowing…can be unethical. Alternatives include diary and experience-sampling methods
Beeper Method
A form of experience-sampling in which participants wore radio-controlled pages that beeped several times per day. After each beep, they had to write down what they were doin
Behavioroid
Test in which subjects report what they would do in the described situation. A hybrid of B and S data
Reliability
Consistency of results of a test given consistent inputs
Measurement error
The cumulative effect of external factors on the outcome of a test. The lower this error, the more reliable a test is (more robust)
Four factors in psychology that undermine reliability
Low precision, the state of the participant, the state of the experimenter, events in the environment during the study
Techniques to improve reliability
Be careful with research procedure, enforce a standardized research protocol, measure something important, aggregation (averaging)
The more error-filled your measurements are, the ____ of them you need
more
Validity
The degree to which a measurement actually measures what it claims to assess. Reliability is a necessary but not sufficient condition for validity
Construct
An intangible framework that affects and helps explain things that are visible. Ex: gravity, intelligence, personality, sociability
Construct validation
Testing a hypothesis that a certain construct is responsible for certain behaviors. Ex: giving people a sociability test and then counting their number of FB friends and the number of parties they attend in a week. If they all tend to pick out individuals as being highly sociable, then you might start to believe that each of them has some degree of validity as a measure of sociability
Generalizability
The degree to which a measurement can be found under diverse circumstances, like time, context, participant population, and so on. Combines the aspects of reliability and validity.
Limitations of generalizability
Gender Bias: Women are more likely than men to signup for psych studies
Show vs No-Shows: Results can only be obtained from participants that show up to the study. Only a problem if the groups of show and no-show are different
Ethnic and Cultural Diversity: Studies MUST include sufficient representation of all ethnic groups in the sample if the researcher wants wide application of their results across ethnic/cultural lines
Case method
Studying a particular phenomenon or individual in-depth, both to understand the particular case and to discover general lessons or scientific laws
Experimental method
Research technique that establishes causal relationship between an independent variable and dependent variable by randomly assigning participants to experimental groups characterized by differing levels of x, and measuring the average behavior that results in each group
Personality
Patterns of behavior: motives, intentions, goals, strategies, and how people perceive and construct the world
MMPI
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. One of the most widely used tests in the world. Has been used in assessment of psychological difficulties and job screening.
Yields B data because it presents items like “I prefer a shower to a bath” to which the subject must agree or disagree
CPI
California Psychological Inventory. Similar to MMPI, but for “normal” individuals
16PF
Sixteen personality factor questionnaire
SVIB
Strong Vocational Interest Blank. Used to help people choose suitable careers
HPI
Hogan Personality Inventory. Used by employers for personnel selection
Omnibus inventories
Tests that measure a wide range of personality traits
NEO Personality Inventory
Measures 5 broad traits along with 30 subscales of facets
Self-monitoring scale
Asks how closely you watch other people for cures on how to behave
Attributional complexity scale
Asks about the level of complexity in your thinking about the causes of behavior
Projective tests
Based on the theory that if a subject is asked to interpret a meaningless or ambiguous stimulus, their reaction is not due to the stimulus, rather a projection of their needs, feelings, experiences, though processes, and other hidden aspects of the mind
Thematic Apperception Test
The task is to make up stories about a series of realistic-looking pictures. The subject’s “implicit motives” are alluded to through the themes of the story. the subject many not be previously aware of these himself.
This is the only one of the projective tests that is scored using a standardized system.
A similar, shorter version is now used. This is the PSE
NHST
Null hypothesis significance testing: the traditional method of statistical data analysis that determines the chance of getting the result if there were no relationship of interest.
Disadvantages: can be difficult to describe, criterion for significance is an arbitrary rule of thumb, nonsignificant results can sometimes be misinterpreted as “no result”, and it only protects against false positives (type I errors)
P-level
Probability of obtaining a result from a statistical test if there really is no difference between groups or no relationship between variables
Null hypothesis
The possibility of zero result
Population value
The “real” value. If this is less than the probability that differences DO occur by chance (which is the p value), then the difference is significant, meaning there is some kind of relationship going on.
Type I error
False positive
There is believed to be a result when there actually is not
Type II error
False negative
It is decided that there is no effect when there actually is
Effect size
Reflects the magnitude of the significance of results/differences. Measured by correlation coefficient
Correlation coefficient
Between -1 and +1. Illustrates the strength and direction of a relationship
Binomial Effect Size Display
Shows how much of an effect an experimental intervention is likely to have, and how well one can predict an outcome from an individual measurement of difference
Replication
Examines the stability of results by getting the same results repeatedly with difference participants and in different labs. Combats publication bias and extrapolation of small, questionable studies (small sample sizes, p-hacking
Daryl Bem and his “prerecognition” study
A study that examines subjects’ ability to react to stimuli presented in the future. No one could recreate his findings, so it was suggested that he only published studies that successfully illustrated prerecognition
Diedrik Stapel
Accused of fraudulent research because he literally faked his data
Questionable research practices
(QPRs) - increase the chances of obtaining the result the researcher desires. Such practices include deleting unusual responses, adjusting results to remove the influence of seemingly extraneous factors, and neglecting to report variables or experimental conditions that failed to yield expected results. Not always wrong to do, but should always be reported, reasoned, and questioned
Publication bias
The fact that studies with strong results are more likely to be published than studies with weak results - leads to a published literature that makes effects seem stronger than they really are.
Woodworth Personality Data Sheet
A bank of questions relevant to specific psychological issues
Rational Method
Design of objective tests using items that seem directly obvious and rationally related to what the creator of the test wishes to measure
Factor Analytic Method
Uses factor analysis to identify groups of items that seem to have something in common. Involves administering items to a large number of subjects and then calculating correlation coefficients to find correlations between outcomes. Consider what a pair of outcomes has in common and then name the factor. Has been used to deiced how many fundamental traits exist
The Big Five
Openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism
What fraction does the Spearman-Brown Formula predict?
The increase in reliability you get when you add equivalent items to a test.
